The GetDPI Photography Forum

Great to see you here. Join our insightful photographic forum today and start tapping into a huge wealth of photographic knowledge. Completing our simple registration process will allow you to gain access to exclusive content, add your own topics and posts, share your work and connect with other members through your own private inbox! And don’t forget to say hi!

New macbook pro running slow

Hi all,

I have a new 15" 2.2 MBP with 8GB ram, an OWC 120 GB 6G SSD drive in the HD location and a 500GB 7200 rpm drive in the optical bay with a data doubler.

Running the Digilloyd medium photoshop action, I get speeds of 129 (initial warmup), 130, 135, 134, 139 when run with 4 iterations. This seems really slow.

Any ideas?
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Bill check to make sure your Negotiated speed is 6gb

Like this

Intel 6 Series Chipset:

Vendor: Intel
Product: 6 Series Chipset
Link Speed: 6 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 6 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.30 Supported
 
Thanks Guy, it shows as being correct, but my TRIM support = no which may be an issue.

If you run the Digilloyd test, what do you get?
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
I do not run those tests as I find them to not reflect my usage patterns and prefer instead to run pure speed tests of the various system components.
Running Photoshop from an action is very different from running the commands interactively.
Besides, when the numbers come in strange, you have no idea what went wrong.
-bob
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
Thanks Guy, it shows as being correct, but my TRIM support = no which may be an issue.

If you run the Digilloyd test, what do you get?
OSX does not support trim until maybe Lion.
There is some unsupported trim code that can be enabled, but users report various experiences.
If you are using a sandforce based ssd, them much of the advantage of trim support is reduced because of the way that sandforce manages its space.
-bob
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
Thanks Guy, it shows as being correct, but my TRIM support = no which may be an issue.

If you run the Digilloyd test, what do you get?
I am sure that Lloyd is available to work out the issue. He consults on performance tuning based on his methods.
-bob
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Also need to be careful your drives are not that close to full. You want elbow room on SSD drives.
 

robmac

Well-known member
If VERY new, any chance spotlight (hate that utility) is chewing-up throughput indexing all the files that were transferred over to the two drives? As you likely know Lloyd did have issues with his early-version 2.3 17" due to the internal sata cable and shielding (or lack thereof ) - see his MPG.
 
If VERY new, any chance spotlight (hate that utility) is chewing-up throughput indexing all the files that were transferred over to the two drives? As you likely know Lloyd did have issues with his early-version 2.3 17" due to the internal sata cable and shielding (or lack thereof ) - see his MPG.
That is actually what started this. When I run speed tests, they generally come out pretty high, but sustained real-world use is not particularly fast. I ran the Digilloyd test to see how this computer benchmarked against similar builds. In the Digilloyd medium action test, each test iteration got slower. That should not be the case. The first test should be somewhat slow while the machine allocates memory/resources, then faster to a plateau.

My test results were a bit of a red flag that there may be a problem somewhere, but I'm not sure where to look. I can tell you that the machine is basically the same speed with SSD and 8GB ram as it was with HDD and 4GB ram.

Rob, if you really dislike Spotlight, check out Spotless or No Spot.
 

robmac

Well-known member
Bill, thanks for heads up on Spotless & No Spot. I have my various volumes excluded from SL, but I'm alwasy open to a cleaner solution.

The speed issue is weird. Obviously real world use performance will not yield ideal testing levels, but something is seriously amiss if not seeing appreciable difference between the two configurations.

Assuming the same system install on both HDD and SSD, anything in software effecting one setup should effect the other, so sounds more and more like you have a throughput issue a la Lloyd with his 17". It looks like Apple is replacing his - but he's starting to think it MAY be an issue, possible random in behaviour, to varying degrees with some of the newer models. His discussion so far pertains to his 17" but...

Sounds like a chat with someone from Apple is in order. Always fun after getting a new product. Good luck and please update us as it gets worked out.
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
Check your memory capacity in about this mac to see that the machine is seeing what you think you have installed.
Also check the error logs for activity, especially disk related errors.
I have one of the previous OWC ssds and it threw a bunch or errors before settling down.
I would imagine that most of the performance difference ought to be memory, bor ssd, since it adds not all that much in photoshop performance.
-bob
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
The error logs can be read via the console utility
Applications>>Utilities>>Console
Once running, look for Diagnostics and system.log on the left side.
thanks
-bob
 
Top